I should know better

Spent an unprofitable morning setting up a digital box in the bedroom and then fiddling with it for reception. You can waste hours on that type of thing, and I have concluded that the little ex-security monitor which I picked up for a song in the the eighties and use as a bedroom TV is perhaps a tad over the hill and will have to be replaced.

I do collect old radios......but I seem to accumulate old TVs There`s a subtle difference, which has a lot to do with inertia and disposal difficulties. The radios increase in value - for the interested out there, the pride of fhe collection is a 1936 Philco Peoples (original valves, black ebonite, working order, now earthed ). The TVs increase in dust.

I used to be able to fiddle with them like the radios. In the seventies, despairing of boredom in a stagnant job, I enrolled for night classes in TV repair. It was highly entertaining, a real sanity saver.

There we would stand, knees trembling, circuit diagrams and soldering irons at the ready. And at the other side of the room, lined up on benches, hummed, banged and shuddered the Hulks - ancient sets all scavenged from the skips at the back of TV rental shops, some of them smoking gently, all stripped down for service.......

Collectively they would have been snapped up by Gilliam or Carpenter for set dressing.

You prayed not to get a smoker. Please, something quiet and non-agressive just needing degaussing, or a few resistors replacing........

Several of us tended to approach them at arms length. Seeing this, the cheery chap taking the class decided to offer some reassurance.

"It`s true that you do meet quite a few sets that are electrically unsafe. Well, there`s no need to worry. If you feel there`s a problem, just keep your left hand in your pocket and work with your right. See, your heart`s on the left side, so if the set decides to earth to ground through you, the juice`ll go down your right side and miss your heart entirely!"

As often, words failed me. I have often wondered since just how long he survived, and by which other mad tenets. Probably phlogiston and the continued existence of Elvis were happily accepted as gospel. A man for whom Old Sparky, the electric chair, would have held no fear.

I don`t fiddle with TV sets any more. Alas, like so many things, they moved on and I didn`t..